The present invention relates to a dashboard, especially for a motor vehicle.
However, although more particularly developed for such applications, the present invention could also be used in all those fields of economic activity in which driving, control and/or monitoring stations are likely to be encountered.
At the present time, in the automobile field, flat-shaped dashboards have been developed, that is to say dashboards with walls of shallow thickness, comprising housings making it possible internally to accommodate, at the locations provided for this purpose, equipment elements such as the various components of a heating, ventilation and/or air-conditioning circuit, for example, these also, however, defining difficult and unusable geometric regions.
The housings are themselves also flat in shape, that is to say with walls of shallow thickness the relative positions of which define the location of the components as well as ducts for the circulation of an airflow between them. The housings are held in place by way of reinforcing elements provided at the front of the vehicles, especially a crosspiece.
Such solutions already constitute progress in terms of the degree of integration by comparison with preceding dashboards in which all the components were brought in, put in place and fixed one by one, by specific assembly operations. Nevertheless, they remain inadequate.
First of all, certain equipment elements still have to be attached to the crosspiece, or elsewhere, in specific assembly operations.
Moreover, the coexistence between the housings and the crosspiece is an intricate matter. This is because it does not allow optimisation of the take-up of the available space, especially by reason of the shape of the housings and of their arrangement in a plane orthogonal to the crosspiece.
It should also be noted that the crosspiece and the housings are of different technologies and thus require separate manufacturing operations.
The object of the present invention is to propose a dashboard which overcomes the above-mentioned drawbacks and makes it possible to enhance the degree of integration of these equipment elements.
Another object of the present invention is to propose a dashboard allowing optimisation of the available space.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will emerge in the course of the description which will follow which is given only by way of indication and which is not for any limiting purpose.
The invention relates to a dashboard, especially for a motor vehicle, with at least of one three-dimensional element, able to allow the integration of equipment elements into the dashboard, characterised in that the three-dimensional element, designed extending longitudinally, consists of a body, shaped in volume and equipped at least with housings for the equipment elements, which are produced in the mass of the body, and of a substantially flat-shaped piece, interacting with the body so as to close at least some of the housings.